


amphetamine

by boycotttlove



Category: Bandom, Fall Out Boy
Genre: America's Suitehearts AU, Gen, M/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-03-11
Updated: 2013-03-19
Packaged: 2017-12-05 00:46:12
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,885
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/716930
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/boycotttlove/pseuds/boycotttlove
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>an america's suitehearts au: </p><p>the hand of god in the bodies of men tastes a little like this. to create and to destroy are one and the same. cryptic is not a synonym for quality. you are not a synonym for the cure. there is always far more truth in myth than one would prefer to believe.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. lullabye

_it’s not what it seems in the land of dreams_

It’s quiet – too quiet and the dust on the streets lays heavily on the Sandman’s mind. The street is too dark and that’s his fault, he knows, as the faces in the windows recede out of fear. The Sandman has come down, and he is angry – the slow sort of anger that has been boiling underneath the skin of this land for far too long. But now something has shifted, and Sandman can feel it in his bones. There is an old magic he cannot control, but he can read, and it is telling him that something is wrong, deeply wrong. So wrong that the very earth itself cries out.

 

Benzedrine lives in a tiny house on the outskirts of the village. He needs to be near the people, he always says. They need him, Benzedrine says. Sandman needs him, needs him in the way that feels like words whispered against skin in the darkest parts of the night, in a way that hasn’t happened yet.

 

The village air is cold, the night oddly dark, but Sandman cannot feel it. He needs to see Benzedrine more than he usually does. People may not dream tonight, but Sandman has a sudden fear that they may not wake up, either. His breath comes out as _BenzedrineBenzedrineBenzedrine_. Oh god, that man makes him high in the worst ways.

 

He finds Benzedrine’s shack dark, though such an occurrence is not unusual, especially if Benzedrine is cross with him. For one lovely moment, Sandman wonders what he did to anger him this time. Probably something small, that a smile can make fade. The thought warms him, this thought of Benzedrine looking up at him with exasperation and affection in those eyes of his.

 

He knocks on the door and hears the hollow sound echo throughout the house. He waits, rocking back on his heels, imagining Benzedrine grumbling as he sets his beakers down, leaving the lab while muttering to himself. But he won’t mind once he sees Sandman. Sandman knows this the same way he knows how to breathe.

 

Sandman exhales, and no one answers the door. He knocks again, but nothing. He knocks repeatedly, hoping to annoy Benzedrine enough for him to answer. Silence.

 

The worry rushes back into his stomach, and he suddenly feels sick. He tries to talk himself down, just as Benzedrine would. It’s nothing, there’s a logical explanation. He’s not dead, not gone. He’s sleeping. He’s working. He’s here.

 

Still, Sandman is impatient, so he threads the lock open with a thought and slips into the house. The front hall is dark, with only faint moonlight coming in through the window. He can see the outline of familiar objects lining the walls, the darkness of the familiar rooms to each side. It shouldn’t feel as wrong as it does.

 

The house is quiet – that’s the other thing. Sandman knows how to read the air of this world, and this sort of silence does not happen, a complete absence of noise, a complete nothing.

 

Benzedrine sleeps on a tiny cot tucked into the very back corner of the shack, and Sandman has fond memories of its hard edges digging into his spine as Benzedrine breathes against his neck, as he talks and talks and talks into the darkness and the cold of the shack never matters because Benzedrine is a real thing.

 

Sandman walks past said corner and sees nothing save the empty cot and the trunk where Benzedrine keeps his few personal possessions. He refuses to let Benzedrine’s absence fool him, tells himself that Benzedrine never sleeps there unless someone pulls him out of the lab. Yes, he is in the lab. Why should he be anywhere else?

 

The door to the lab is a thin, flimsy thing hanging by one hinge in Benzedrine’s unused kitchen. Sandman pulls it open with so much force that it almost snaps. The stairs are dark, descending into some sort of abyss perhaps, and at this moment Sandman cannot keep pretending that nothing is wrong. The lab is a veritable cavern, and Benzedrine always keeps it lit with thousands of lanterns dangling from chains that criss-cross the ceiling. Sandman only remembers the lab in flashes of dark shelves and herbs and chemicals. Benzedrine lets no one in, not even Sandman.

 

He takes the steps quickly, as the darkness does not phase him. There is an unfamiliar beat in his heart; he may know danger and foreboding, he may create both, but he does not know such foreboding as this. That Benzedrine could be – could be something else – he does not even know how to consider it, let alone handle it.

 

He almost falls over as he steps off the final stair and onto the lab’s floor. The air is cooler, with a general dampness that hangs in the air, like a feeling that the Sandman cannot shake. The darkness this far underground is absolute, and though the Sandman is at home in it, it still does not allow him to see.

 

He forces his vision into the shadows, ignoring the way his hands shake as though they are entirely their own creation. Slowly, the large table in the center of the room becomes visible, faint and grey against the blackness. As he approaches, he sees none of the chaos Benzedrine complains of, none of the mess of papers and beakers he remembers from his few previous visits.

 

The table is bare, save for one paper. Sandman tries to pick it up, but his fingers cannot grasp it if they refuse to stay still. His whole body is shaking. The world feels like it is turning upside down slowly; it is sinking, and Sandman cannot get away.

 

_have you ever wanted to disappear?_

 

He does not need the rest of the letter to know what it says. He can read it in the earth, in the sky, in the thickness of the air that he will choke on soon. Benzedrine has gone, and the world is imbalanced. Sandman is imbalanced.

 

He clutches the edge of the table. It is finished. He will die, by his own hand or by the inevitable fade of a half-god without a compliment.

 

 _Or_ , a voice like Benzedrine’s whispers, _perhaps it has just begun._


	2. 1. disloyal order of water buffaloes

_i'm a loose bolt of a complete machine_

           In the beginning, god created the heavens and the earth, and unto humankind he gave the gift of dreams. Through their dreaming the humans were able to see as they could not during their waking, some able even to stare into the past and the future, and to look into the face of god without fear and without shame. And when god looked back upon them, he said verily unto himself, “This is not how things should be, for these creatures shall surely die if they discover their own power. Thus, I shall create a land of shadows to guide their dreaming, so that when they look into the void they see not my face, but their own.”

 

            And thus out of his own breath god formed a middle land between waking and sleeping, between life and death, between heaven and hell. He looked upon it and said also, “I shall create a lesser god to rule the land, so that the humans may not look upon my face or know my being.”

 

            Thus, out of the bones of this new land he formed the lesser god, whose name cannot be known in mortal tongue, who in legends (such as this) is called the Old One. And god set the Old One over the realm, so that he might bring stability to the land and shape it unto his will.

           

            In those days, the land was dark, filled as it was with shadows. The Old One, having the land to do with it what he desired, chose to form it to his will, so that the mountains rose out the bones of the earth and the crags formed, the land dipped and rose according to the Old One’s plan. There was still no light over the land, for this the Old One did not see fit to allow, for already the creatures on high called his domain the Land of Shadows.

 

            Then the Old One sought fit to divide his power, to give some responsibility to another, lesser god, so that he would not need to continue in the management of all dreams, as he had not the power of god himself. Yet, he still could create, and so he formed from his own knowledge a half-god of lesser power. This half-god he called the Catcher, and to him was given the tools to discover all wisdom in the world and outside of it.

 

            The Catcher made his home in a green valley in the mountainous region, where he could look into the void on the edge of the world and give knowledge to the humans, as directed by the will of the Old One.

 

            Only one flaw existed in the Old One’s plan, and this flaw consisted in the nature of the Catcher. For he was only a half-god, incomplete in power without a second half-god as complement. Not only that, he was also lonely, as a solitary being in a dark world, with only the void to stare into endlessly, only to learn and never to speak in return.

 

            And so he constantly prayed unto the Old One, begging for another creature that he might at least look upon, and for a partner to compliment his work. The Old One heard his cries, and promised the Catcher that one day he would grant both wishes, but only in his own timing.

 

            The Old One did think it wise to create another half-god, for god had come to him and ordered him to disturb the dreams of the people, who had grown complacent and far too happy. And so the Old One formed another half-god, this time from the shadows of the land, that this god might bring sleep unto the humans and cause their thoughts to turn to the darkness as they slept. To this god, he gave the name Sandman.

 

            The Sandman entered into the land and made his home atop a high hill, where he looked out upon a vast plain. He, too, was very lonely, for he knew nothing of the Catcher’s existence on the other side of the world. He prayed unto the Old One, asking for something to occupy his time, something other than the dreams of the humans.

 

            The Old One answered his prayer and brought to him a collection of damned souls to occupy the plain at the foot of Sandman’s hill. For a time, the Sandman entertained himself watching the people fumble in the darkness, attempting to create a civilization despite the Sandman’s meddling.

 

            Also, the Old One made this known to the Catcher, who began a journey across the world to find the Sandman, the only other of his kind, in hopes that this half-god would cure his loneliness. When he arrived, the Sandman was overjoyed to have another like himself. But both soon discovered that they did not compliment, and they still could not work as they knew that they knew they one day could.

 

            Unknown to the two half-gods, the Old One himself required a compliment, one to work against him and maintain the balance of the world. And so the Old One formed from his own self a half-god to bring chaos to oppose the Old One’s own order. He called his new creation the Horse-Shoe Crab and set him into the world.

 

            The Horse-Shoe Crab chose not to settle, but instead to travel throughout the land, playing games of chance both with the people of the Land of Shadows and with the void itself. He became known for daring and the coin he kept in his pocket, a gift from the Old One. It is said that one flip of the coin could change fate, if called correctly.

 

            And so they lived together in harmony, these three half-gods and the people of the Land, though darkness still hung heavy over the face of the world and the world itself still remained in imbalance. For the Old One had not yet answered the prayers of either the Catcher or the Sandman when they asked for a compliment.

 

            To the Sandman, the world had grown especially dark, the shadows pressing firmly on his mind in the hours he spent alone. His business of bringing nightmares bit back with a vengeance, and as the bringer of terror and despair he could not escape his own creations. He could see nothing behind his eyelids save his own fear and feel nothing except a constant gasping for air in everything he did.

 

            Every night, when the darkness in the land increased, the Sandman prayed to the Old One for relief, for something to heal his mind. He no longer cared whether or not he had a compliment; all he wanted was an ending.

            The Old One looked down upon his creation and saw the Sandman’s distress and the imbalance his creation felt in both his work and in his heart. Thus, he decided to create another half-god, one to compliment the Sandman in every way.

 

            As the legends decree, to be compliments, the halves must be both different and the same. And so the Old One traveled into the waking realm, that of the living, and searched throughout the world for the perfect material from which to fashion his final creation, the one which he believed would be his greatest. But no matter how desperately he searched, he could find nothing that suited the Sandman.

 

            Finally, in exasperation, the Old One looked to the heavens and was blinded by the bright light which the humans call the Sun. He was struck by its beauty and it’s intensity, and thought to himself, “Here it is, from this I shall fashion my final creation.”

 

            And so from the light of the Sun, the Old One formed a final half-god. However, as a creature of the Shadow, his darkness entered into the new creature, so that it became that of both dark and light. When the Old One looked upon his creation, he was pleased, and called him Benzedrine. He set Benzedrine into a small house in Sandman’s village, and trusted that the two would draw close to one another.

 

            As a final gift, the Old One created day and night within the Land of Shadows, so that by it the people could see it, and so that his newest creation could still see the light from which he derived his being. The inhabitants of the land were well pleased with this gift, and for all time thereafter celebrated the Old One and his gift of light.

 

            In the light of the first ever day, the Sandman saw Benzedrine for the first time and wondered at him, for in his presence the other god felt a calm and a warmth unknown to him before. Without any words spoken, he knew inside of his bones there here was his compliment, his stability, even perhaps his savior. Thus from their first meeting, the Sandman and Dr. Benzedrine could be parted by nothing in heaven or on earth, not even death.

 

            Though the Old One considered his work complete and though the world hung in balance, there remained still a half-god with no compliment. The Catcher, in his home at the edge of the world, waited even now for the creation of his compliment, for the god to work alongside of him and to bring his powers into balance.

 

            He no longer prayed unto the Old One, who had failed him countless times since his creation. Instead, he stared ever into the void, seeking therein the answer that would satisfy all questions.

 

            One night, as he watched, from the void stepped a small, radiant figure of a young woman, dressed in black with eyes as green as grass on the hills of heaven. She was beautiful, though young; yet despite her beauty, she radiated a calm that could only be taken as dangerous.

 

            This was the Lady, the child of the void, queen of mysteries and the obscuring of knowledge. Newborn into the world, she knew only of herself, and that she had been born as the Catcher’s compliment. She spent days by his side, looking into the void that created her and learning all the knowledge of the world.

 

            “I will hide these things from the humans,” she said unto him, “for you cannot work without opposition. You will show some, and I will hide some, and we will bargain for what knowledge that shall be.”

 

            After a while, she soon returned into the void, promising the Catcher that she would return at times to create bargains with him. And though she was gone and he was alone again, the Catcher kept the memory of her in his mind and no longer felt alone.

 

            With the birth of the Lady, the creation of the Land of Shadows was concluded, just as it has been written herein. All praise unto the Old One and his majesty on high, amen. 


End file.
